Hitchcock

Hitchcock's Theories and conventions

 'The ticking bomb theory'

Hitchcock believed that it was not the explosion that created suspense, more so the threat of the imposing bomb that created a suspenseful atmosphere. he quoted that "there is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it."

We used his theory during the planning of our film 'Vanished', where we created suspense with non-diegetic backing music which was creepy and sinister, overlaying the "happy family" on the beach. The incongruence causes tension to build.

Fear Factor

Hitchcock also proposed that “It’s what you don’t see that frightens you, what your mind fills in, the implicit usually being more terrifying than the explicit.” The whole point being the manipulation of the audience

Which is another convention we in cooperated into our film, as when Phoebe becomes unconscious the audience is completely unaware to what happened to her, which therefore allows their imaginations to question what happened to her.

Narrative style

 

Hitchcock usually uses an unrestricted narrative as it is suspenseful, where the audience are aware of the villain's presence but the characters are not. but in our film we used a restricted narrative as we wanted a surprise to the audience when Phoebe becomes unconscious as their minds fill in the gaps for the lost time.